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Refugee Week Berlin

Refugee Week Berlin runs in parallel to and shares much in common with Refugee Week UK. The goals are to facilitate connections, to share their experiences with others the media.

The program of the first Refugee Week Berlin includes an exhibition, performances, lectures and workshops, and addresses a society in transit that is challenged by technological, cultural and ecological shifts. The events take place in different sites throughout the city.

The group exhibition The Vivid Unknown is curated by Monika Dorniak, in project room Rosalux (Wriezener Straße 12, Wedding) and other locations in Berlin. The reception is on 18 June, 19.00-23.30h. Opening hours are 19 – 24 June, 13.00-19.00h.

'The Vivid Unknown' is part of Philip Glass's music for the film Naqoyqatsi, which means 'life as war' in the Hopi language. The exhibition reflects on the world in our Anthropocene era, in which the global market has become the major economic and cultural force on the planet; control of artificial systems encounters the organic world, itself undergoing extreme transformations, leading to social disharmony, and new movements. We have transitioned to hyper-mobile interactions and interweaving in digital space, while the physical settlements of marginalised groups are constantly disturbed. Past, present and prospective natural disasters caused by climate change and war force people to leave home and make precarious escapes into the unknown.

The works use our artistic potential, and establish togetherness in times of dispersion and separation through interaction, creation, involvement and research. The main exhibition is both inside and outside project room Rosalux. In the front of the art space, there will be works by Domenique Himmelsbach de Vries, who challenges the very idea of the exhibition by distributing his art in public spaces in the city, helped by fellow activists. The social artists Elisa Dierson, Katja Marie Voigt and Felix Stumpf will develop an installation with refugee children in the project room Tiny Penthaus, in an old hotel now housing refugees, and you will be able to see some of that work in the Rosalux room. Çağlar Tahiroğlu will offer an art-therapy workshop to refugees and migrants, and the results will be on display; her work as psychologist is visible in our installation Journeys, in collaboration with refugee initiatives. Raul Walch is known for his examination of public space and activities with local communities; he will be showing a sculpture inspired by islamic architecture, made with Syrian architecture collective Xero. Matteo Valerio's textile wall installation will be activated through work with artist Monika Dorniak and performer Lingji Hon. Dorniak's sculpture refers to her ongoing process with dancers, her research in philosophy, science and her German-Polish-Lithuanian background; the work body axe (as per x,y,z) engages with inherited war trauma. Ukrainian photographer Valentyn Odnoviun re-accesses historical or socially engaged events and captures them forensically during on-site visits; his Traces of Memory looks into a former Gestapo prison in Berlin. During the artist talk, all these different approaches will be discussed further as part of the exhibition's curatorial statement.